The United States (U.S.) Supreme court has ruled that citizens don’t have a constitutional right to bring their noncitizen spouses into the U.S.
According to Washington Times, the court, in a 6-3 ruling on Friday, June 21, 2024, reaffirmed Congress’s broad power to set immigration limits and the executive branch’s role in carrying out those orders in deciding who can come.
The justices had previously ruled that a would-be migrant lacks the constitutional right to challenge those decisions, and it now ruled that U.S. citizens don’t have the right, either.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, said “we hold that a citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country.”
The case was brought by Sandra Munoz, a U.S. citizen who argued she had a right to sue to get her husband, Luis Ascencio-Cordero, a citizen of El Salvador, into the U.S.
The state department denied him a visa because it suspected he had ties to the vi@l£nt gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, based on four of his body tattoos.
Would-be migrants don’t generally have a right to challenge their denials, but Ms. Munoz argued she had a right because the decision was hindering her own marriage rights. She said that right is at least strong enough to earn the chance to argue her husband isn’t a member of MS-13.
Justice Barrett said the law doesn’t stretch that far.
“Munoz has suffered h@rm from the denial of Asencio-Cordero’s visa application, but that h@rm does not give her a constitutional right to participate in his consular process,” Barrett wrote.
